evening schools

schools for adults that appeared in prerevolutionary Russia in the mid-19th century both in the cities and in rural localities. Their programs and periods of schooling varied.

In the 1870’s and 1880’s evening review and supplementary courses on the program of elementary schools became widespread at city and zemstvo (district) schools. In the 1880’s and especially in the 1890’s general-educational and specialized evening schools for workers began to appear in the capitals and industrial centers. Their appearance was caused by the need of rapidly developing industry for technically trained workers; factory and plant owners began to open evening schools at their factories and plants. An especially active role was played in the organization of evening schools for workers by the Russian Technical Society. In the late 1890’s it opened a number of general-education and vocational-technical evening schools with a more extensive program in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kharkov, Baku, and other cities; they taught geography, history, Russian, mathematics, chemistry, physics, biology, law, political economy, drawing, mechanical drawing, the theory of boilers and steam-driven machines, electrical engineering, and other subjects.

Marxists made use of evening schools for contact with workers and for organizational and agitation-and-propaganda work. The Smolensk School beyond the Nev-skaia Zastava (Neva Gate) in St. Petersburg, where N. K. Krupskaia taught, was highly regarded by many workers. Many of its students then joined a Marxist workers’ circle headed by V. I. Lenin.

After the Great October Socialist Revolution a broad Soviet system of adult schools with evening classes began to be created.